via Khmer NZ News Media
AsianCorrespondent — June 22, 2010 — Thousands of opposition supporters who once occupied central Bangkok in a bid to bring down the Thai government paid their final respects to a renegade general assassinated at the height of the Red Shirt demonstrations.
Amid heightened security, the mourners filed through a Buddhist temple in Bangkok to attend the cremation of Major General Khattiya Sawasdiphol, who was shot in the head by a sniper on May 13 whilst giving an interview to foreign journalists.
It was the largest gathering of Red Shirts - who traded their signature attire for black and white clothes of mourning - since the army's crackdown on their sprawling protest in the Thai capital on 19 May.
As expected there was a heavy police presence. 800 policemen - including bomb squads, riot police and undercover officers - were being deployed in and around the temple, just a few blocks from the area where the Red Shirt protest started.
The Red Shirts staged 10 weeks of protests during which nearly 90 people were killed - most of them protesters shot by soldiers - and more than 1,400 injured before security forces drove them from the enclave in downtown Bangkok they had occupied.
Khattiya, better known as "Seh Daeng," was singled out by the government as the leader of a militant wing of the Red Shirts and a key organiser of their defence strategy.
His killing triggered rioting and violence that led to a final showdown with army troops six days later.
A police investigation into Khattiya's death has so far produced no suspects and the government claimed that the use of force was necessary.
Many of the leaders of the Red Shirt movement are now in custody and facing charges of treason, a charge that carries the death penalty in Thailand.
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